View full sizeCHRIS KNIGHT, The Patriot-NewsProtesters during a Voter ID Rally in Love Park across the street from City Hall in Philadelphia on Sept. 13.

The injunction from Judge Robert Simpson did not overturn the law. Nonetheless, the ruling mitigated concerns of voter advocates that the restriction would have prevented hundreds of thousands of state residents from voting.

The law thrust Pennsylvania into the forefront of the national debate over voting rights. Advocates across the country say millions of voters stand to be barred from voting amid a wave of newly enacted laws that place restrictions on voting.

From cutbacks to early voting and restrictions on registration to voter ID laws that mirror the one postponed in Pennsylvania, the growing list of voter-restriction laws threaten the participation of as many as 5 million voters, advocates say.

Most of them, they say, are minorities, women and young voters.

No fewer than 180 restrictive voting bills have been introduced in 41 states since the beginning of 2011, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.

Pennsylvania is among 19 states that have passed 25 laws that some say place restrictions on voting. Twenty-seven additional restrictive bills are pending in six states.

On Wednesday, a federal court cleared South Carolina’s voter ID law, ruling that its requirement that voters show photo identification does not discriminate against racial minorities. But just like Pennsylvania, South Carolina won’t be able to enforce its law in this election. The law will take effect at the start of next year.

The roll call of states with what critics say are restrictive laws — including Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Iowa and Virginia — account for 198 electoral votes, or 73 percent of the 270 needed to win the presidency.

“You can’t argue with the facts,” said Nancy Abudu, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. “A lot of facts are coming from information the states have volunteered, and even though they try to downplay it, you can’t deny the numbers.”

Recent polls indicate that a majority of Pennsylvanians support the voter ID law. Proponents say it will protect the integrity of the ballot box.

Gov. Tom Corbett said last week that the state likely will proceed with the “soft rollout” of the law and he was leaning against an appeal. With the election just four weeks away, Corbett has issued no appeals to the injunction.

The long-defunct poll tax, which imposed a fee on voters to vote, might have been ruled unconstitutional. But voter photo ID laws impose a similar fee on voters in a roundabout way, she said.

The federal government struck down a photo ID law in Texas as unconstitutional.

“We have to remain vigilant,” Abudu said. “The legislatures and officials are always coming up with new sophisticated means of engaging in historically unlawful behavior.” Â

‘There is no voter fraud’Â

Political scientists lecture on the concept of instrumental voting — the idea that every vote counts — even though most elections are decided by wide gaps.

However, Bill Rosenberg pointed to the 1976 presidential race between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford to illustrate that the concept has real-time validity.

If fewer than 6,000 voters in five states had voted differently, Ford, not Carter, would have won that election, said Rosenberg, an author and political scientist at Drexel University.

“A small number of votes can matter a lot,” he said. “It’s why people get upset by voter ID laws. ... If you knock some people out, it could make a difference.”

Still, full electoral participation in any given election is, well, a utopian myth, he said.

The presidential election — the highest political participation in the country — garners about 51 percent participation of the registered electorate.

“This mythical sense that everyone is going to participate, yes, it would be nice to have,” Rosenberg said.

Lawmakers across the country and in Pennsylvania widely cite voter fraud as a reason for introducing and enacting restrictive voting laws.

Yet most states have widely conceded to the absence of fraud, even as lawmakers have admitted other motives, said Keesha Gaskins, a spokeswoman for NYU’s Brennan Center. In defending the voter ID law, attorneys for the commonwealth didn’t cite any cases of fraud.

In Pennsylvania, House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny County, in June drew criticism when he suggested that the intent of the voter ID law was to give GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney an advantage over President Obama.

“Pennsylvania has conceded there is no voter fraud. There never was. It really wasn’t an issue,” Gaskins said. “We have to look state to state as to the intention and purpose of these laws. We firmly believe the impact of these laws is to prevent voting.”

In Pennsylvania, charges of voter fraud have been leveled mainly by Republicans, but such allegations cut across political party lines.

In 2008, Republicans accused the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, a community activist group known as ACORN, of falsifying hundreds of thousands of voter-registration forms. Several ACORN officials were convicted, and the organization has since disbanded, but the case is used as a salvo anytime GOP leaders speak about election season cheating.

Republicans have had to distance themselves from fraud.

In September, Florida Republican officials cut their ties with a GOP voter-registration contractor for participating in unlawful voter registration.

“Democrats are not the only ones that have committed questionable election-law behavior,” Abudu said. “That applies to both sides of aisle.” Â

Defending the lawÂ

The voter ID law in and of itself imposes no restriction on voting, says Teri Adams, president of the Independence Hall Tea Party Association,

“People are just asked to give voter identification” she said. “This is something that’s required of people across the board.”

The law, she said, would have been enforced uniformly whether a voter was registered Democrat, Republican, Independent or other party.

“The cry that this is some kind of restriction on voters’ rights is just an excuse made by Democrats because they want to continue to cheat unchecked and, unfortunately, too many people, too many judges are buying this excuse,” Adams said.

The Independence Hall Tea Party Association has joined other groups in urging lawmakers to appeal the court’s ruling that delays enforcement of the law.

“We are sorry for the injunction,” Adams said. “Democrats will be able to cheat unchecked as they have in the past. There’s plenty of evidence it hurts the integrity of all our votes.”

Other groups continue to push for unrestricted voting rights.

“In voting, we want everybody to have that chance and not have it aggregated it in any way,” said Grace Newsome, a spokeswoman for the League of Women Voters of Harrisburg. “The voter should have the right to vote and not have it be limited in any way.”

In the end, the ramifications of such laws won’t be known until after the fact.

“That’s really the question of the day,” Gaskin said. “What is the impact of these laws? We simply don’t know, but we know voter turnout decreases after the imposition of these laws.” Â

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